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Tuesday, October 21, 2003
Bio-weapons traces found in JI hideout
MANILA -- Security forces recovered bomb making materials, a bio-terrorism manual and traces of possible biological weapons in a raid on a Jema'ah Islamiyah hideout in Cotabato City, a senior military official said Monday.
Up to eight local and foreign JI suspects escaped Sunday's raid but left behind possible residues of clostridium tetanae, the bacteria that causes tetanus, said Lt. Gen. Rodolfo Garcia, Armed Forces vice chief of staff.
A television report said two American biochemical experts discovered traces of the bacteria-causing tetanus in the samples.
"Residues of chemicals there are still being analyzed by (police) chemical experts," Garcia said.
Garcia said the samples were not found in bulk and that time is needed to determine if the chemicals were indeed biological weapons.
The television report added that investigators also found traces of lead nitrate and cyanide at the site.
The report did not identify the Americans or say how they were involved. US Ambassador to the Philippines Francis Ricciardone said in a television interview he did not know the details of the raid.
Explosives, manuals
Police also seized documents, including "one that details some bio-terror manuals or something to that effect," Garcia, meanwhile, said.
"We were able to get quite a number of documents that would be quite significant" in the course of further anti-terrorist operations, he added without elaborating.
In Sunday's raid, seized were explosive materials and bomb-making manuals written mostly in Arabic from the house of a certain Lolito Adanza in Barangay Rosary Heights, said Supt. Felipe Napoles of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (Armm).
The raid was on an apartment in Cotabato City, on southern Mindanao, where a man described by authorities as JI's number two, Indonesian Taufiq Rifqi, was arrested two weeks ago.
A week ago police shot dead another Indonesian JI member, fugitive bomb-maker Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi, also on Mindanao.
Cotabato police investigator Felipe Napoles said Sunday's raid turned up "bomb-making material, electronic components and gadgets, diagrams for homemade bomb-making and Christmas light wiring," as well as computer diskettes.
Napoles said he saw an American chemist with the raiding team but did not know who the American was.
A report from the raiding team later said that they found "possible biological weapons," Napoles added.
8 JI members
Police briefly detained Adanza for questioning but later released without charges, Napoles added.
He said Adanza told police Filipinos had rented the apartment, but that "foreign-looking men had been frequenting the house."
Army Col. Felipe Tabas, head of an anti-terrorist task force in Cotabato, said authorities suspect that up to eight JI members had trained in bomb making in the village of Cararao, in an area that formed part of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front's Camp Abubakar training base.
"They probably stayed in that house," Tabas added.
The raid on a Cotabato apartment unit was launched a day after the visit to Manila of US President George W. Bush and more than two weeks after the arrest of JI's number two man.
JI is a Southeast Asian Islamic network blamed for a series of bombings in the region, including last year's Bali blasts that killed 202 people.
The US government considers JI an affiliate of the al-Qaeda terror group said to be behind the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.
Alliances
Manila's anti-terror allies have expressed concern in recent days about JI's activities on Mindanao, a large island that borders Indonesia and Malaysia and has been a hotbed of a decades-old Muslim separatist rebellion.
"Jemaah Islamiyah operates here and the arrest of Taufiq Rifqi proves it," Garcia said Monday.
Rifqi was arrested at a Cotabato hotel in early October, but the authorities only confirmed his detention two weeks later.
Investigations into the terror group exposed links between militants in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines and Singapore, including alliances with the Abu Sayyaf and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).
Defense Secretary Eduardo Ermita said up to 40 Mindanao-trained JI foreign militants may be in the Philippines.
"These are foreign terrorists who in 1999 and 2000 conducted training in Camp Abubakar," he said, referring to the former headquarters of the separatist MILF.
"When all the camps were dismantled, they were driven away. But they are still there in the area and they are the subject of intensive intelligence gathering of the armed forces and the police," he said.
MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu again denied Monday charges that the group had hosted JI training facilities. Miko Santos/With AFP
(October 21, 2003 issue)
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